It sits in glass pastry cases across the Philly region and others across the country: a golden laminated pastry dough pocket with a lattice top layer. Inside, a mix of spinach and feta.
They’re called “bistros.” And coffee shops all over Philly sell them to pair with their lattes, pourovers, and other offerings. They look the same nearly everywhere — that’s because they are.
The spinach feta bistros are shipped frozen and distributed by a corporate food service giant.
Now, they’re the center of online discourse, amid cafe-dwellers and little treat enthusiasts: Why are the pastries at so many cafes all the same? Does outsourcing make them inherently bad?
But this goes beyond the internet. Several Philadelphia-area cafe owners said they had no idea of the bistros’ origin. They thought they were scratch-made by a local wholesale bakery.
Jonathan Deutsch, the director of the Drexel Food Lab, says customers’ charged reactions make sense because of the nostalgia that baked goods can evoke.
“You’re tapping into an emotional issue where people expect their pastries to have a certain sort of artisanship,” Deutsch said. “They’re reacting to the connotations of that supplier being more mass-market and less artisan, and that that may disappoint people. But ultimately it’s a market economy.”
Who makes the spinach feta pastries?
Coffee shops without kitchens regularly rely on wholesale baked goods. In turn, customers have started noticing replica treats across town.
One of the most recognizable is the aforementioned bistro, manufactured by the prominent global bakery Bridor, and distributed frozen through restaurant providers, like Sysco.
Bridor launched its Bistro line in 2015 with its signature lattice crust. Sysco members — including restaurants, schools, and hotels — can purchase cases of the ready-to-bake treats.
Locally, TikTokers have started discussing how the bistros seen around Philly appear to be from Sysco.
“I went down this rabbit hole last summer … all because I was trying to source this leek and Parmesan pastry I had,” one user wrote. Another said, “I found out my favorite pastry they ‘made’ was from Sysco.”
But the discussion predates Philly TikTokers.
Across Reddit and Facebook, coffee shop visitors have described feeling bamboozled upon finding out their favorite spinach and feta puff pastry wasn’t made in-house at all. The discussions date back several years.
Foodie Facebook groups in Massachusetts and North Carolina and Subreddit pages in Atlanta and Rochester, N.Y., have all described the same phenomenon. In a few cases, the realization has been celebrated. “Wait,” one Reddit user wrote. “You’re telling me I can just buy these bad boys in bulk?”
The situation poses a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg scenario: Philly has wonderful coffee shops. Philly has a booming bakery scene. As for why those hands can’t be put together, industry experts say it boils down to sustainability.
Delco wholesale bakery known for its croissants outsources extras
Very few local bakeries are geared up or financially able to be suppliers. So when a local coffee shop wants to offer snacks to tide customers over, their options are limited.
As a specialty coffee roaster, Matt Scottoline, ReAnimator Coffee’s director of coffee and marketing, says the shop’s main focus has to stay on the coffee experience, citing infrastructure and distribution challenges that come with making baked goods on site.
“Pastry just isn’t a core thing we do,” he said. “We’d rather wholesale them from someone with that expertise.”
So, ReAnimator, along with many coffee shops, turns to Au Fournil.
The almost 20-year-old Havertown-based French wholesale bakery is best known for its croissants.
On TikTok, Philly-area locals have noticed Au Fournil’s presence across regional coffee shops. Spots including (but not limited to) Green Line Cafe, OX, Thank You Thank You, Warehouse Cafe, Coffee Zeit, Mug Coffee & Clay, ReAnimator, and Sunday Girl have sourced baked goods from the purveyor.
This is where the spinach and feta bistros come in.
In addition to its made-in-house croissants and sweets, Au Fournil also sells the Bridor bistros to its coffee shop clients. At least five coffee shop owners who spoke with The Inquirer under the condition of anonymity, citing their working relationship with Au Fournil, said they didn’t know the bistros were outsourced.
TikTokers putting two and two together say they feel ripped off by the idea of going to a local coffee shop and buying a presumably local pastry, only to find out it’s from Sysco.
“While we might want to picture a French master pastry chef in the back of our favorite coffee shop, it’s probably not going to be affordable or scalable for most places to do in-house baking,” Deutsch at Drexel Food Lab said.
Au Fournil owner Stephane Wojtowicz, acknowledged the social media response.
“Regarding some recent social media activity, we recognize that public discussion is part of doing business,” he said, adding that Au Fournil mostly produces its own pastries and distributes them to local businesses.
“Most of our selection is made entirely in-house, including all our croissants, Danishes, tarts, coffee cakes, and beignets,” he said.
According to Wojtowicz, Au Fournil currently subcontracts four Bridor items: the spinach bistro, raspberry cream cheese puffs, apple pie puffs, and apple turnovers. Until recently, they also subcontracted a leek and Parmesan bistro. Au Fournil receives those items frozen, bakes and finishes them in-house.
“We decided to outsource these four items to offer a wider variety to our customers, carefully selecting Bridor specifically for their product quality,” he added. “Switching these items to being fully produced in-house would place an unreasonable strain on our small staff.”
Industry experts say it’s common for wholesalers to outsource and combine offerings to give their coffee shop clients a one-stop shop.
After all, Au Fournil is still baking off the frozen bistros and offering them at a low enough rate to allow shops to make a small profit.
The spinach and feta version costs $155 for a case of 36 (or $4.30 per pastry) according to a Sysco member’s portal. An Au Fournil price sheet reviewed by The Inquirer from January listed the spinach and feta bistros for $2.32 each, about half of what they’d cost per pastry directly from Bridor, still frozen, and at a much larger scale.
Several Philly coffee shop representatives who spoke with The Inquirer said it would’ve been nice to know the bistros were outsourced, but that it doesn’t change their view of the bakery. Additionally, the bistros — regardless of who makes them — remain a top seller.
“Au Fournil has been a strong partner for me, and I’ve never experienced anything negative with them or their product,” Becca Grites, who owns the Old City cafe Sunday Girl, said. “Wholesale is necessary for many food and beverage businesses, and at the end of the day, we’re all doing the best we can.”
Deutsch said if coffee shop customers are still irked, their best bet is to put their money where their mouth is.
“Bridor is a high-quality, reputable bakery. So just because it’s coming frozen on a truck doesn’t make it a bad or inferior product. That’s the way most things in the food industry work,” Deutsch said. “If that’s something that’s important to a consumer, there are amazing pastry shops in Philly making things all from scratch. You should support the kind of businesses you want to see in Philly.”